Blog Post

Rolling up our sleeves and getting things done

Portrait: Since the early days, CFO Catherine Dietrich has helped write the Allianz X success story.

When Catherine Dietrich thinks back to 2018, to her first day as CFO at Allianz X, the digital investments arm of Allianz Group, she gets right to the point and speaks plainly:

“I liked what we were doing, and someone needed to take responsibility for the finance function. I was happy to roll up my sleeves and get on with it!”

Catherine, who was born and grew up in England, was already part of what became Allianz X way back when it was just a prototype at Allianz headquarters, before it became an independent subsidiary. Catherine initially joined the Allianz Group via Allianz Capital Partners, the direct private equity entity of the company, in 2004 as an investment controller. Nowadays, ACP is most well-known for its alternative investments in large infrastructure like renewable energy, broadband, and water. In 2015, she was involved in the first exciting investments Allianz was making in young digital companies. Even then, she knew that corporate venture-capital investors needed to build long-standing relationships with their portfolio companies.

Responsible, communicative, a stabilizing presence: contrary to the usual CFO stereotypes, Catherine is not some emotionally chilly bean counter. Even if she is quite enthusiastic about a well-put-together Excel spreadsheet or a coherently structured valuation model, Catherine also has a talent for languages. However, her heart beats for figures and finance and she saw languages as complementary to her future career rather than the focus. As such, Catherine decided to study International Business Management and German at the University of Bath. And she did so with big ambitions:

“If you are in the business area, you can shape the news. You can shape the headlines. That is exciting.”

Catherine got her start in the finance business at the end of the 1990s in London at HSBC Investment Bank. What was this intense early period of her career like? Quite a contrast to growing up in tranquil Gloucestershire. She sums it up with the saying “work hard, play hard.” Less than a year later, she was offered the opportunity to move to Munich and join the technology focused investment bank Robertson Stephens International. Catherine jumped at the chance — and headed to Germany. Just a few years later, she joined Allianz.

Her moving up the career ladder at a brisk pace and with clear-headed decisions looked like a calculated plan, but Catherine shakes her head:

“I never had a career plan.”

However, she does have a solid set of operational principles. First:

“Strive to give your best.”

Second:

“Develop as many transferable skills as you can, in order to be ready to take advantage of opportunities as they come up. Expert knowledge can sideline you into a niche; a base of transferable skills lets you move in more than one direction.”

And, third:

“If you see room for improvement, speak up and be prepared to follow through with taking on responsibility for the project!”

With her calm and considered manner, Catherine the CFO is the ideal ally to outgoing, frontier-pushing CEO Nazim Cetin:

“He’s both a visionary and an executor. He has put Allianz X on the road to success.”

In the finance sector, Catherine is one of the few C-level women. Though, that’s a fact she hasn’t ever given much thought to.

“I’ve never thought of this as being a man’s world. It’s my world!”

Catherine is married, and she and her husband have two sons, ages 9 and 12. After each was born, she took a bit over a year of parental leave. A career obstacle? Not really — more like an opportunity:

“Taking a break could actually put you in the right place at the right time, but don’t forget to maintain your network.”

Of course, doing justice to a demanding full-time job and a young family at the same time was definitely hard.

“And it still is, sometimes, but it can be done.”

Other women do it, too, she says, and under much harder conditions, such as being a single mother, or working two jobs in addition to running a household and raising a family.

Catherine jokingly refers to Allianz X as her third child. After all, she has been with the company since it took its tentative first steps. With pride, she talks about the unit’s development within the parent company, Allianz SE, into an independent subsidiary:

“What we do is at the core of keeping Allianz relevant.”

For her, the success of Allianz X is based — among other things — on the very special spirit that the management trio, Dr. Nazim Cetin, Catherine herself, and Carsten Middendorf, have breathed into the company. An agile spirit? Catherine doesn’t like that term: too overused, too arbitrary. She prefers to describe the special Allianz X mindset as “rolling up our sleeves and getting things done” and as “ready to take on whatever challenge comes next.”

Moving forward decisively with bold decisions: that’s how Allianz X has become a globally significant investor in the digital ecosystems of insurance and asset management over the last five years with a portfolio of almost than 30 companies — which has included 11 unicorns — and assets under management of over 2 billion euros. Started with just a handful of dedicated people, the Allianz X team now consists of about 40 employees with around 20 different nationalities. Just as Allianz X believes in the potential of its portfolio companies, the Allianz X management team trusts in the potential of Allianz X’s employees.

“We are a knowledge and skill-based company. The value of what we do is in our team.”

Her team appreciates Catherine’s attention to detail, her dedication, and her hands-on mentality: “She’s a board member at Allianz X, but she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty,” says one team member. If there’s a job to do, Catherine will lend a hand in a pinch. And that hasn’t changed over the years, even though her team has grown. “She’s somebody who cares very much about her team, and she will go the extra mile to support it,” says another team member. “She puts a lot of trust in us and provides an environment that allows team members to grow and shape their roles to match.” Catherine has assembled her team in such a way that the personalities and talents complement each other but can also work independently towards a common goal: “She just enables us to be ourselves. And she understands what’s going on in her team without being intrusive.”

Catherine sums up the last five years of hard work and laudable success with typically British understatement:

“It’s been an interesting journey so far.”

And what’s the next chapter in the Allianz X success story? Catherine smiles promisingly.

“More of the same. And, who knows? We’ll see.”

For more on Allianz X, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Medium, and check out our website at https://www.allianzx.com.